Can you be an animal lover and eat animals? Would it be better to say “I am a pet lover”? Trish Healy questions the nature of our relationship with animals and the food industry.
The same people, however, would be happy have this done to a ‘farm’ animal.
I ask you, why is one beings life less important and of less value than the other? If a ‘pet’ is abused there is an outcry and yet, are we not abusing the animal we see as food?
The same lamb that is cooed over in the fields at springtime is thought not about when on our plates. We give our children cuddly toys, pigs, calves, lambs, and serve the same animal to them in the guise of a breaded dinosaur.
Just how much are we as the consumer aware of the horrors of the slaughterhouse? Do we connect that we pay the hand that takes the life? We don’t want to know that part, better hidden, no glass walls to see through.
What is humane about a life not given but taken? How many meat eaters have watched any footage at all of a slaughterhouse? It’s not pretty, it’s not humane, its soul destroying but hey it tastes good…do we have the right to kill because of taste?
Free range – at least they have had a good life. Has anyone truly investigated this free range or do you take the labels word for it?
In 2011 an undercover investigation by Hillside Animal Sanctuary made public the horrific conditions on a Norfolk UK ‘Freedom Food Farm’, a scheme – backed by the RSPCA – which is meant to guarantee high animal welfare standards . The farm was suspended from the freedom food scheme but the animals where left in distress.
We are brainwashed by so many adverts that deviate from truth. How many are aware that the cow’s milk on the shelves is the milk a baby calf went without?
Gummi Bears, a children’s favourite sweet contains gelatine which is made from the bones of mainly pigs and cows, unsuitable then for the vegetarian, vegan, and those religions that do not allow the consumption of certain animals.
Many items bought do not by law have to state certain ingredients; wine for example contains proteins, egg whites and isinglass, a derivative of sturgeon bladders, Safer to buy the vegan version if you wish to stay clear of any animal agents
We are a nation of fast food junkies who pay no heed to why these meals are so cheap as long as they stay this way.
Who wants to think of the battery caged hens, twisted in the packed cages, featherless and broken? They will be barely a year old before they go to feed the fast food outlets.
Who cares that they are hatched in their thousands, the males minced in the mincing machine and the females kept for the cages or the free range market, same beginning…same end. They are no longer living beings but commodities as are all animals raised for the food industry.
I ask when are we as a species going to ‘evolve’ from the ‘food chain’ and become compassionate to those beings we share this planet with.
In past years, women were laughed at for believing they were entitled to vote; that the black slave would be free; that women would preach in the ministry. So I ask you to nurture these thoughts I have put into words and ask yourself, “to eat without meat?” … why not?
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I had no idea about the Gummi Bears. Yuck!
While animal welfare is an important issue, perhaps you’re ire would be better directed at the government who have shown they have little regard for welfare of our fellow citizens. A woman commits suicide over the bedroom tax. Another terminally ill lady, found “fit for work” by the ATOS scam dies days later. Many thousands (including in Aberdeen) are reliant on food banks. Shamefully in 21st century Scotland.
I would rather lose everything I own than exist as a food animal.
Also, the vast majority of us who campaign for animal rights (I’m vegan & believe in animal rights rather than welfare) also campaign for human rights too. I have joined in protests against the cuts & I have the deepest sympathy for the poor woman who committed suicide as a result of the impact of the bedroom tax.
I am perfectly capable of campaigning for both but as much as I dislike everything about this government I am fairly confident that they are not going to remove my teeth without anaesthesia, take my offspring each time I give birth, slaughter me when I am no longer of any use or grind me up alive as a waste product of the egg industry…
All slaughting needs to stop period animals do fee pain and do want to live
Wow so true, it makes me ashamed to be human. We really are brain washed, people have a right to see how animal food is created so they can make a true decision should they eat meat.